The Week JD Vance Kept Losing

Iran negotiations, Hungary's election, and the leaders who think they've already wo

How do you “catch up” from a week off when the President threatened to end an entire civilization in a Truth Social post? When the leading candidate for governor in a state that has the world’s 4th largest economy suspends his campaign because of sexual misconduct allegations? When the First Lady bizarrely takes the White House podium to defend her reputation? When our Vice President campaigned for a losing Hungarian politician?

That’s the situation today. Sarah and I look for moments of clarity in a cascade of news: the Pope’s grounded message of peace; an Iowa candidate breaking through with an anti-corruption message; the Hungarian public turning out in record numbers to say “enough.”

And Artemis II. Artemis II splashing back safely on earth, bringing home astronauts who’ve inspired us (see outside of politics) to remember the fragility and wonder of our piece of the universe. - Beth

Topics Discussed

• Less Eric Swalwell (California) and More Rob Sand (Iowa)

• Pakistan Negotiates Iran “Ceasefire” while Congress sits on its hands

• Melania Trump’s Press Conference

• JD Vance’s Losing Streak in Iran and Hungary

• Outside of Politics: Artemis II

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Episode Resources

Pantsuit Politics Resources

Help us celebrate our community in Minneapolis! Submit your design for our Good Neighbor T-Shirt Contest by April 30.

Eric Swalwell

• Ex-staffer says Eric Swalwell, candidate for California governor, sexually assaulted her (San Francisco Chronicle)

• Exclusive: Four women describe sexual misconduct by Rep. Eric Swalwell, including a former staffer who says he raped her | CNN

Trust and Corruption

• Lawsuit Accuses Writer of Using Classmate’s Story in Best-Selling Memoir (The New York Times)

• Someone Has to Be Happy. Why Not Lauren Sánchez Bezos? - The New York Times

• Sam Altman (blog)

• Sam Altman May Control Our Future—Can He Be Trusted? | The New Yorker

• The Good Friday Agreement (Pantsuit Politics)

New York Times Oral Histories

• Kash Patel’s FBI Is Making America Less Safe, Current and Former Employees Say (The New York Times)

• 60 Attorneys on the Year of Chaos Inside Trump’s Justice Department (The New York Times)

• Inside the Turmoil at RFK Jr.’s CDC, as Told by Current and Former Employees (The New York Times)

Polarization

• Opinion | Hasan Piker Is Not the Enemy (Ezra Klein | The New York Times)

• Hey, Democrats: Take Yes for an Answer (Tim Miller)

Episode Transcript

Sarah [00:00:30] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.

Beth [00:00:31] This is Beth Silvers.

Sarah [00:00:32] You’re listening to Pantsuit Politics. We’re back from Spring Break and catching up on all the things, wars, negotiations, Eric Swalwell, whatever the hell’s going on with Melania, and much more on today’s episode. Outside of politics, we’re going to wax poetic about the poetic waxing from our friends over on Artemis 2.

Beth [00:00:54] Most excited about that part. We are very excited that we’re doing our first t-shirt contest in many, many years. We had so much fun the last time we did it. This time around, we are asking for your designs for a Good Neighbors t-shirt to celebrate our live show in Minneapolis, the community there, the power of communities all over the country, America’s 250th anniversary, all the things. Designs are due April 30th. All the information for this contest is in our show notes and on our Substack. We can’t wait to see what you create.

Sarah [00:01:33] Up next. Let’s get to it. Beth, I think we should start with a positive and end with a positive. We’ve got a lot of shit in between.

Beth [00:01:38] I like it. Good plan.

Sarah [00:01:39] All right. Here’s the positive before we get to the more horrific stories from upcoming elections, is the governor’s race in Iowa has been moved from lean Republican to toss up because the Democratic state auditor Rob Sand is killin’ it apparently. They’ve got a five person Republican primary and they’re already campaigning against him. They don’t even know who’s going to win.

Beth [00:02:07] I like it. I like that I know the name Rob Sand. Like you can tell he’s just been out there because I am not from Iowa and he is on my radar. He seems like a person who’s willing to talk to anybody, go anywhere, do anything. And Iowa is a high touch state. You got to be a person who wants to connect with people if you want to win in Iowa. And he seems to really understand that.

Sarah [00:02:27] I just have a warm place in my heart for Iowa after our time there during the Democratic primary.

Beth [00:02:33] Same.

Sarah [00:02:33] And I do think it’s an interesting state and I don’t think it is easily classifiable. Like I know it went for Trump by 13 points in 2024, especially after that-- remember the pollster controversy. Remember when the pollsters came out and said Iowa was going to vote for Kamala?

Beth [00:02:50] Yes.

Sarah [00:02:50] That was the worst. But I do you think it was more complicated. And I think this is true for so many places in the country. You get the right candidate with the right campaign strategy and anything’s available. I truly believe that. I truly believed that.

Beth [00:03:06] Well, and Rob is running on the strategy that I think is the right strategy, which is anti-corruption. Good government. Let’s do things right. That’s what I think is the right answer.

Sarah [00:03:14] Can you put a pin in that? Because that is also a theme from our good stories opening and closing the show.

Beth [00:03:21] Okay.

Sarah [00:03:22] Let’s talk about a less positive campaign development. So I have not been paying attention to the California governor’s race because I found it very overwhelming. There were like eleventy people running. We had Katie Porter have a controversy when she was seen on sort of out clips berating staff and just generally acting out very nice.

Beth [00:03:51] Well, she kind of had a fit in the middle of an interview too that went viral. Just a lot of things.

Sarah [00:03:55] So then kind of falls apart. Although, she’s still in the race, still polling like 14%, I think. So then Eric Swalwell comes in. I don’t know if he was recruited. I don’t know if you just saw his moment, but I was actually thinking about this through the lens of Governor Newsom. Like the fact that it’s just like so wide open to me is a little bit problematic with regards to him. Like I’m not saying he should have like gifted the governorship to anybody. But there should have been some bench building and I don’t know, general strategy. This is always a critique of Barack Obama as well. All that to say, Eric Swalwell gets in. He’s a front runner, but still not like running away with it because there was all this discussion about the Republicans. Maybe the Republicans could win. One of the Republicans could actually win in this like jungle primary or whatever they’ve got going on over there. Then Trump gets involved, he endorses somebody, and the analysis I read was like, well, that fixes that because now people will either avoid the candidate like the plague or coalesce around him, taking voters from somebody who maybe could have risen to the top. Anyway, all I have to say, it was kind of wild all over the place. But Eric Swalwell, I think, was considered the front runner. He had a ton of endorsements: Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, Alex Padilla. When over the weekend the San Francisco Chronicle published an account from a former staffer accusing Eric Swalwell of sexual assault. This came after weeks of chatter online. Then that is followed by a CNN story with more women coming forward. At first, he says, this is false, none of this is true, although I’ve made mistakes and I want to apologize to my wife for my mistakes. He loses basically every endorsement in a very short amount of time. And as of Sunday has suspended his campaign.

Beth [00:05:55] California does democracy in a very overwhelming way always. This is how they roll. It’s an enormous state, bigger than many countries in the world, massive economy. So it makes sense to me that they started with a huge pool of people. It is surprising to me how little coalescing there’s been within that pool. It’s also surprising to be that everybody lined up behind Representative Swalwell because even at his heyday of popularity, an allegation like this would not have been super surprising to me. I never thought about him as a really disciplined, serious legislator. I wonder if he got a little bit of the Gavin Newsom effect, that sense that we need social media stars, we need fighters, we need people who are willing to say anything. And I think he was following along that path. This news didn’t shock me. I had heard things like this floating around social media for some time. I do want to say, I think it’s important for a show like ours to be careful and wait until a newspaper goes forward, publishing those types of allegations. That’s a serious thing. And I want confirmation from organizations that have the resources to report that out and who have the stakes involved to be sued if they’re wrong.

[00:07:09] So I’m not surprised. I think it’s good that he got out of the race. I’m particularly interested in Ruben Gallego withdrawing his endorsement so quickly because I know those two are pals. And I also know that Gallego is somebody who’s being talked about as a potential 2028 candidate. So I think that’s kind of an interesting dimension of this story. To your point about there not being someone kind of clear from the beginning, I just wish Kamala Harris had run for governor in California. I think that that would have been the most effective way for her to prove out that she was a serious contender for president to oppose the Trump administration. I mean, obviously, this is a seat where you can do an incredible amount of good. The state has so many resources, just the legal apparatus in California opens so many doors. And she’s a person who would know how to work with the legal apparatus in California. So I was really disappointed that she passed on this. And I know that people are likely to coalesce maybe around Xavier Becerra right now. That makes a lot of sense to me, but I’m not a Californian and it is a complex state.

Sarah [00:08:18] Yeah, the listeners who I asked in the comment thread of the Monday’s news brief said Xavier Bracera is like where a lot of people are ending up. I had not heard any of these rumors about Eric Swalwell. I had always had like a red flag about him ever since that spy controversy, which never made sense to me. I’m not saying he was like in on spying with China, but it just, to me, indicated a level of sloppiness, bare minimum in the management of his staff and his offices and his general political career. Like it did seem like there was more ambition than much else. I think the point you were making about while we had not commented on, it is difficult because I think in most of the reporting, even from major news sources, it’s these content creators were putting pressure on mainstream media to pay attention to these women and their stories. And I think that’s a really hard line. Like where are you elevating a story ethically? Where are you using the power of a platform to bring attention to something that the mainstream media is ignoring?

[00:09:38] Now, I would say understanding how newspapers like the San Francisco Chronicle operate-- I was also thinking about this while reading a write-up of the New York Times reporting on that blockbuster memoir that seems to have been a lie, The Tell, it just takes time. So it feels like content creators were the only ones thinking about these for weeks, but it probably took weeks for the San Francisco Chronicle to do the reporting necessary to actually confirm sources, confirm all the stuff. So I understand and agree sometimes that it does take outside independent media groups to bring attention to a story. I think with something this delicate, I do think we’re-- I don’t know if you think this is naive. I kind of think we’ve passed the point where like a news organization buries something like this, unless it was like the Washington Post about Jeff Bezos. You know what I mean? So they want to get the story, they want to get it right. And so I think it’s hard. I think it’s a tough one. I think it’s a tough one.

Beth [00:10:54] I do too. And no shade to anyone in the way they make those decisions. For me, it is important to wait. If people contact us with information that we can’t confirm, we tell them you should be in touch with this person. Here’s a person at an organization with the resources to do this right. We don’t have them. And without that apparatus behind us, I just don’t think it’s right for us to go forward. And I’m aware of all kinds of social media rumors about Eric Swalwell. Going back a number of years, there are some current ones right now that aren’t being talked about in connection with this story. So I want to just be transparent about the fact that sometimes we know what’s out there, but we’re not going to talk about it until that confirmation comes through in a way where we feel like we can responsibly talk about it. Other creators are going to make different decisions and that’s what this wild west of independent media looks like.

Sarah [00:11:49] Either way, I’m glad that these stories came out.

Beth [00:11:52] Absolutely.

Sarah [00:11:53] They’re horrific. His level of abuse of power, just sexual harassment, sexual assault, the trauma that many of these women experience it’s horrific. I’m glad that the Democratic establishment so quickly was like, uh-uh, no, absolutely not. It was a pretty rapid response. And now there is talk of a response in Congress. So Congress is back to work this week. They got a lot on their plate and so they decided to add expulsion dramas to the list. Representative Anna Paulina Luna has announced plans to force an expulsion vote for Eric Swalwell who is still a representative from California, possibly as soon as this week and then in a classic tit for tat, Democrats said they will counter with their own expulsion boat targeting Tony Gonzalez which we talked about on the spicy. Who admitted to a relationship with a former staffer who then self-emulated and killed herself. It’s a truly horrific story. There’s some other representatives, a Republican from Florida, a Democrat from Florida-- what’s the common denominator there-- who have been found guilty by the House of Ethics Committees on corruption related charges. Expulsion votes are pretty rare because it takes two thirds of Congress to make that happen. And so I can’t tell if this is just political theater, I mean, Anna Paulina Luna seems to love to take the reins of Congress in her own hands. The girl is really always really itching to reform a lot I think of the party processes when in the House of Representatives. So we’ll see. The majority-minority situation in the House of Representatives is so tight right now. This could really mix things up.

Beth [00:13:47] I think there are a couple of dynamics worth discussing here. One is that I do think in connection with the Epstein files, there is a contingent of people in the House who are aware that Congress itself is due for an examination of how they handle it when members are accused, especially by staff members of sexual assault or harassment. And I think there are some people in that contingency who I wouldn’t agree with on much else, but I think they’re sincere in their desire to reform Congress. I think expulsion is the worst way to do that. But I think that that’s where some of it comes from. I also know that people fundraise off trying to censure one another, off trying expel one another off the theatrics that come from this as the kind of story that the public can wrap its brain around. That piece of this sends me to the moon with anger. The important things on the desk of the House of Representatives right now, the fact that Congress is just laying down as the president wages this war in Iran. I do not want to hear about this. Also, we have elections. There’s a democratic way to get to these issues. Work with your party, run someone against these folks, put pressure on them and tell them you need to step out, cut off the fundraising spigots where you can and get the information out there. But the people can expel the representatives who don’t deserve to be in the House. We don’t need Congress spending its time this way.

Sarah [00:15:18] Well, and especially since they have work to do. I mean, they’re reconciling the two versions of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The House and Senate Budget Committee chairs are beginning to draft instructions for the second reconciliation bill targeting particularly healthcare spending. They want to do this by July, but these Medicaid cuts that they’re talking about, the letting Republicans say they’re going to pay for this through cutting fraud, which is a sleight of hand-- not to mention they have the FISA reauthorization that they’re trying to attach to the Save American Act, which they cannot let go of even though nobody wants it and everybody hates it. Okay, not everybody, but most people. It’s just, to me, taking this razor thin majority and making these two big things y’all are trying to get accomplished, almost impossible by taking all these expulsion votes is just classic Mike Johnson. Lack of management.

Beth [00:16:22] And I would like to focus on the fact that that second reconciliation bill would be about funding ICE and Customs and Border Patrol for several years. Taking those two entities out of the normal process to get them funded so they won’t have to work with a Democratic majority Congress on the funding. And I think, again, if you believe your immigration agenda is popular, stand up and put your name on it. Don’t weasel through this reconciliation package. Defend these organizations or not, but this is the opposite of that. To continue to do things that are so unpopular in such an underhanded way as we approach elections, I think they’re just telling on themselves and they’re giving Democrats a lot to talk about as we head into November.

Sarah [00:17:10] I can’t tell if they care.

Beth [00:17:11] I can’t either. It’s bizarre.

Sarah [00:17:14] I can sincerely not tell if they care. Sometimes I wish I could do like a Freaky Friday and just change places with like a Jamie Comer or somebody just so I could like truly understand the motivations, the strategy, how you’re thinking through all this, seeing how unpopular the war in Iran is, seeing how people are just being squeezed and squeezed and squeezed by prices. Like I am dumbfounded. I know what’s going through some of their minds. Some of their minds are like 50+ of them are like, I’m out, I’m not doing this anymore. What do I care? But the rest who want to stay, I guess there’s just such a high proportion that are in incredibly safe seats and they didn’t get a primary challenge, so they’re just thinking they’re good. I don’t know.

Beth [00:18:08] We have a lot of short-term thinkers in Congress who feel like being in the minority sucks and so I want to get out of that. And then they are in the majority and they’re like, oh, this sucks too. And if you’re unhappy with the job, cool. Get out of the job. It’s a two-year gig. It’s pretty short. You can stand on your head for two years, as my grandmother would have said. I am disgusted though especially by the people who’ve decided they are getting out, that they aren’t doing more to focus on what really matters right now. Again, we have this whole war going on. And for Congress to be bickering over the details of things they know will not pass, for the People’s House to be so knotted up around funding and the Save America Act and these expulsion motions and censures, it just feels so unserious to me. But I would love a different perspective and I would watch that Freaky Friday episode. I would even be willing to make a podcast with Jamie Comer to facilitate that situation.

Sarah [00:19:13] Well, let’s talk about an update on the war in Iran up next. So while we were on spring break, Donald Trump threatened to annihilate the entire Iranian civilization. I don’t really know what else there is to say about that. He was just threatening, threatening, and threatening. Then right up next to his deadline, we got a two week ceasefire deal with Iran. Now, I’m not sure anybody told Israel, who continues to bomb the shit out of Lebanon, the conflict and interest between Israel and the United States has deepened. Israel has been clear that they want to annihilate Hezbollah due to Lebanon what they did to Gaza. I think it was like 40,000 homes have been destroyed. They’ve said you can’t come back. And so I don’t see any real ceasing of hostilities between those two groups anytime soon. And there’s just no light. There’s no daylight, particularly now between Hezbollah and Iran which seems to keep complicating the negotiations between the United States and Iran. Vice President JD Vance put his face and name and presence all over this latest round of negotiations that took place over the weekend. They were mediated by the Prime Minister of Pakistan. They went on for 21 hours, but they got nowhere. They want Iran to give up their enriched uranium. They want Iran to give up control of the Strait of Hormuz and open it back up. Now, Iran was like, no, thank you very much. We have now found this incredible tool in the global economy. So we’re not going to do that. And so now Trump is saying there’s going to be a blockade so that Iran cannot export any oil through the Strait of Hormuz if no one else can either. And it’s just a giant, giant mess.

Beth [00:21:15] I am also angered by the tone of the 21 hours discussion from the White House. Are we supposed to be impressed? You’re holding the whole world by the strings right now. Get back in there. 21 hours is not even a whole day. Get back in there. Take a nap and roll up your sleeves, guys.

Sarah [00:21:39] Well, the pulling up your sleeves is in direct contrast with the vibe of the president who was at a UFC fight as these negotiations fell apart.

Beth [00:21:47] With the Secretary of State.

Sarah [00:21:48] Yeah. And saying, like, I don’t care, we’ve already won, who cares what happens. Outrageous.

Beth [00:21:55] I suppose you can say we’ve already won when you seem to have no idea what winning means. That’s been the problem from the beginning. I have trouble talking about this war because I want to put myself in a space of really testing my biases. I want to ask myself if another administration did this, would I have been supportive? Would I have understood it differently? Would I be thinking about it differently? And when I have gotten to a place on that question, I want to ask myself, okay, well, even if the answer’s no, we shouldn’t have done this, which is where I am. We shouldn’t’ve done this. Okay, well we did. What does a reasonable resolution look like? And this administration just makes it impossible to even pose a serious question because the president shifts his messaging constantly because he says things like we’ve won anyway while at a UFC fight after posting on Truth Social a threat that had the entire universe holding its breath. And then he sends JD Vance over there.

[00:22:56] What possible experience in JD Vance’s life prepared him to conduct these negotiations? You look at this whole team and just think what is going on here? We know from the podcast, former ambassador Swanny Hunt, that women being involved in peace negotiations actually leads to more sustainable peace. There just seems to be no one at the table here who is anything other than a political actor and a political hack. And I think the Iranians have gained as much power as they’ve lost here. If I am part of the Iranian government now, and I don’t even know what the Iranian government is right now, and I don’t think administration knows either, I read reports that one person on background told a news organization, we don’t really know who we’re negotiating with, and we don’t really know what we’re negotiating about. So those seem like problems for any kind of discussion to be successful. But if I were part of whatever contingent in Iran is trying to negotiate something with the United States of America, I think I’d recognize that the Strait of Hormuz in 2026 and beyond might be as valuable to us or more so than having a nuclear weapon. So they’ve not only not articulated what the goal is here, they’ve also probably changed the calculus for Iran several times over by their actions.

Sarah [00:24:14] Yeah. Iran has learned they can treat it like a toll booth.

Beth [00:24:17] One hundred percent. The president told him that. He put it on Truth Social.

Sarah [00:24:21] Yeah, I mean, so that’s a pretty powerful thing. I think he does know what winning is. And it’s when he says it’s winning. He defines his own reality. And for a long time has successfully defined it for enough people that that worked for him. But war is not culture war. We put the word culture in front of it for a reason. And probably that’s not a fair description either. This is different. You can’t just bloviate or filibuster your way through this. It’s the same for the economy. You can’t just say it doesn’t matter. We’re winning. I decide. The way he is communicating is just getting so ridiculous and over the top. I mean, we wanted to talk about his fight with the Pope. I don’t know if you saw this, but did you see that? Amidst this fight with a Pope, he posted a photo of him like Jesus healing someone.

Beth [00:25:37] I did.

Sarah [00:25:37] And it’s a joke. Like everything he says is so over the top, I mean, the Pope’s stuff when he was like he’s soft on crime. The pope? What are you even talking about? My dawg, what are you talking about? I understand the frustration with the people in the House who are starting to talk about the 25th amendment. And also, I don’t know, I could be persuaded. It’s unhinged. And the long post he went after Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly and Candace Owens because in the midst of this I’m going to eliminate a whole civilization they said, this is whack, this evil. This is not how somebody’s supposed to talk. So if in the course of a week you’ve pissed off everybody from Pope Leo to Tucker Carlsen and you’re spending your time in the mist of a war and an economic crisis going after them and posting photos of yourself looking like Jesus, maybe this is a 25th Amendment situation.

Beth [00:26:48] We clearly have a problem because even as the civilization ending threat, Truth Social posts came out, I’m also seeing on social media rumors that he’s back at the hospital or perhaps he’s dead or whatever. I mean, it’s wild everything that’s out there. And that is hard to keep your feet on the ground and be a serious person in such an unserious time. I’m not talking about the 25th Amendment because you would need to use smelling salts for me if this cabinet made a move like that. I just think this cabinet is not going to do that. I don’t see where impeachment gets anybody anywhere right now. So all I need to do as my whole body absorbed the true fear and grief and embarrassment and shame that I felt when I read that post was to pray for him. To pray for his mind and his heart and his soul to be moved to see the people and the stakes as real. I think Pope Leo breaks through all of this noise and slop and mess so clearly because everyone is real to him and because he is guided by something that is worth making sacrifices for. And I have never seen any indication that Donald Trump as a business person, as a father, as a human being, certainly as a president, is guided by something worth making sacrifices for. I’ve just never seen it from him. I don’t know what you do when that’s the truth about the president, but that’s the truth about the president as I understand him.

Sarah [00:28:37] I mean, look, I posted on social media myself, I shared Pope Leo carrying the cross through all 14 stations in the Coliseum. It was like the first Pope to do this in like decades. That if he keeps this up, I’m going to convert. He is such a powerful figure. He’s enormously popular. Him inevitably coming to conflict with Donald Trump should not be surprising to anyone based on who Donald Trump is and who Publio has shown himself to be. And I think something about him being American, something about being on the global stage, especially this week where he is heading for an 11 day tour of Africa, which is the future. It’s the future of the Catholic Church and in so many ways, it’s the feature of the globe. And so it’s like that future orientation, that acknowledgement, and just the way he will speak with such clarity and moral authority when he said, I have no fear of the Trump administration or speaking out loudly of the message of the gospel.

Pope Leo XIV [00:29:38] I don’t want to get into a debate with him. I don’t think that the message of the gospel is meant to be abused in the way that some people are doing. And I will continue to speak out about this, against war, looking to promote peace, promoting dialog and multilateral relationships among the states to look for just solutions to the problems. Too many people are suffering in the world today. Too many innocent people are being killed and I think someone has to stand up and say there’s a better way to do this. I have no fear of neither the Trump administration nor speaking out loudly about the message in the gospel. And that’s what I believe.

Sarah [00:30:16] That’s it. And it is so heartening. It is so inspiring. The way Trump continues to pick a fight with him when you are so clearly losing it is just wild to me. It’s also that the Catholic Church is growing. It’s getting all these young converts right now. And you think going after the Pope is the right call? Over spring break on one of our very many long hikes, Nicholas and I were talking about we are in this space where you know it’s not just the war in Ukraine, it’s not just the war in Iran, it is the chaos in Cuba and Haiti and Venezuela and it’s this economic fallout which I think is going to get so much worse. I read this analysis that was saying we’re like moving from price shock to market breakdown. There’s not going to be enough. It’s not about like pricing the futures. The oil won’t be there. The fertilizer won’t be there. Like it’s going to be so bad because this is layering on stress on top of liberation day and all that bullshit. And it’s hard to remember that these were choices. He could have come in with this victory, which he did have in the 2024 election and just coasted and been probably enormously popular by now, even if prices hadn’t come down dramatically. Like you’re just causing all these problems for yourself. Like I told you before we started recording, sometimes it feels like he’s trying to destroy the country on purpose. It’s mind boggling. I hate to bring up the White House again when we talk about these serious things, but it’s like well now it’s a security risk. Well, you tore it down and we’re supposed to be worried about the security risk you created by tearing down the East Wing before asking anybody and not just not asking, but lying straight to everyone’s face and saying you were going to retain the structural integrity. Like it’s so ridiculous.

Beth [00:32:41] I won’t get this right word for word, but John Ossoff has a great line about how in Trump’s America the wealthy get tax breaks, the well-connected get stock tips, and the rest of us are left holding the bag. And that’s what everything that you just talked about looks like. If he were just coasting and preoccupying himself with the decorating and the statues and the arch and whatever...

Sarah [00:33:06] Oh God, don’t bring up the arch! I swear to God, my head will turn around backwards.

Beth [00:33:11] But, look, I could live with that. I wouldn’t like it, but I could live with that. That’s not what he’s doing. He is taking the highest stakes situations that were simmering on the stove and throwing them all over the world’s kitchen. And how could the Pope not address that when this administration tells us in a number of forms that they do it in the name of Christianity? I understand people don’t want to go to church and hear who to vote for. I don’t either. But when the Christian church is being used as justification, as deflection, as sword and shield by the president and so many actors within this government, I absolutely need religious leaders to say something about that. And I think the Pope is saying the best things that he can say on the other side of it.

Sarah [00:34:09] Well, and again, okay, let’s say he didn’t have all these completely unforced errors. I’m not saying there weren’t going to be challenges and difficulties. But he’s not paying attention to any of those either. Like the artificial intelligence, I am concerned about AI, obviously. I am growing more concerned about the tenor of AI resistance. So over the weekend a man was arrested for throwing a Molotov cocktail at Sam Altman’s San Francisco home. Since then, there has been another attack on his home. And what really freaked me out was there was an Indiana lawmaker whose house was attacked and there was a note that was like “No data centers.” Just like the vitriol and the violence. And when you have a system that seems so corrupt, when everybody’s getting powerful and more rich and more powerful. And I’m supposed to read this piece of the New York Times about how Lauren Sanchez Bezos deserves to be happy. There’s a part of me that’s like I’m really concerned about this, and also I think it’s completely predictable. People feel powerless. Concerning people on the thin edge between wellness and violence, this is not a good environment for them. Is he paying attention in all of this? No.

[00:35:36] I finally sat down and read the oral history of Health and Human Services under Robert Kennedy’s leadership. And the part I cannot stop thinking about, because I hadn’t even realized, is that you had that attack on a federal building where the man came and shot at the CDC and killed a police officer, and Trump has never acknowledged it. Never even acknowledged it. And who’s soft on crime and who doesn’t care about law and order? Not to mention, I read a whole list of all the crimes that the January 6th people who were released have committed since then. That about sent me over the edge. So it’s not just like he could have not created more problems. There still would have been problems. There still are other problems and it’s not just he’s ignoring them, he’s often making them actively worse.

Beth [00:36:22] To your point about this being predictable, I was on a panel years ago now with some business leaders locally. And one of them said after the panel, people like me who have made it well past the American dream, the American dream with an exponent, have got to recognize that we are in French Revolution territory right now. Something has to give. This is not going to work. And that was years ago before anyone was talking about artificial intelligence at anything close to the scale we are today. And so I don’t think this is technology resistance. I just think AI has taken the sentiment that was already existing and supercharged it and given it new tools and changed the way that we talk to each other about these issues and created new opportunities for people who wish us harm to come in and divide us at an even greater depth and scale. And here again we have a president untethered to any kind of guide post to help us through that. I don’t think a lot of Sam Altman, but I read his blog post about this. I don’t wish him harm, certainly. I don’t wish for his home to be attacked. And I was reading his post saying, we need a social conversation. We need social leadership. We need democratic leadership on what is supposed to happen with AI. Who is to guide us through that right now? There are a number of ideas about that, but even if we went hard at it, even if we said, you know what, AI is a utility. Data centers have to be approved by this federal agency. We’re creating a new federal agency to deal with all of this. Do you want this administration to be in charge of that? Do you think this administration stewards that more responsibly than private industry is stewarding it? I don’t know. I have no confidence whatsoever that putting more power in the federal government, which is where I think it would have to sit, would do much for us right now. It might make it worse.

Sarah [00:38:24] Well, after reading the oral histories of the takeover, the FBI, the Justice Department, and the Department of Health and Human Services, my answer is definitively no. It is a shit show. Every one of those, if you’ve not read those three from the New York Times, I don’t know. I don’t know what kind of mental health preparation you would need to do to read them all at once, but it would be something. And this was so frustrating. Like to the Sam Altman of it all, if we didn’t have to spend all our time talking about the horrific leadership from the Trump administration. Like you could spend a whole show on him because there’s a lot going on there. Yeah, he’s not your favorite because the New Yorker just did this human investigation and there’s some real problems. Two decades of deception, manipulation, this idea that he is a liar, no other word for it. He still has that lawsuit from his sister accusing him of sexual abuse. He said in one of his posts, “I’m not a normal person anymore.” What does that mean? I have some ideas. Meanwhile, OpenAI is valued at $852 billion. And also I am kind of interested in his policy proposal structured on the new deal. I respect that he at least put it out there. No one else was. And it’s like how do you hold all of that at the same time that he’s getting Molotov cocktails thrown at his house? I’m not really sure.

Beth [00:39:50] We have the same situation with Sam Altman, which he does at least acknowledge that we have with this president. One person’s whims, desires, baggage, motivations, cannot hold the world by a string. And we keep landing there. That that’s what is happening with Donald Trump, and that’s what is happening with a lot of these tech leaders. It’s just too much power and responsibility for one person.

Sarah [00:40:14] Well, and you have Sam Altman, Elon Musk, another person who’s like sort of in that scenario, they’re going to be going to trial about their ongoing feud. Jury selection begins April 27th. To me it’s been described all kinds of ways like predatory foreign policy coming from the United States or as Ezra called it, head on a pike foreign policy. Like, it feels like all these kings feuding: Musk, Altman, Trump, Putin, Xi Jinping, Netanyahu. It did not feel like that to me in my 20s or 30s. Like there were powerful people, but this was a table that everyone was sitting at and everybody had different motivations and there was an ability to keep them in check. And as people feel tossed around, and at the mercy of the whims of people who do not lead normal lives, they’re going to keep lashing out. They’re going to keep lashing out.

Beth [00:41:27] That is a global phenomenon for sure. In America, if I had to focus in on one problem to start chipping away at to deal with that, it is our Congress.

Sarah [00:41:40] I thought you were going to say Melania and Jeffrey Epstein.

Beth [00:41:44] No. I do want to talk about Melania and Jeffrey.

Sarah [00:41:49] You don’t think that’s the number one issue facing our nation requiring an important presidential address?

Beth [00:41:58] It isn’t. No, but standing at the same podium that he stands at to talk about war and peace, there she is. Before we talk about her, I want to say all of this used to be how the world was. We explicitly designed a system informing this nation to keep the world from being that again, to change how the world is, and we have degraded it so significantly. We also have an opportunity to change that. I don’t mean to be a broken record, but the way that this Congress is doing nothing-- and I put it on the Democrats too. I’m tired of reading pieces about how it’s unfair to be angry at the Democrats because what can they really do about the war? I don’t know, but it’s something more than the people they represent can do about the war. And I think it’s pretty clear what the American people want here. And I think that they ought to take some risks and stand up and be counted and do their darndest to reclaim their mantle as the first branch of government. And if they don’t, they are sentencing us to a world of capricious kings picking at each other and all of us being tossed around in the midst of those fights and people casually discussing ending civilizations because that’s what they feel like that day. But Melania...

Sarah [00:43:33] Well, I think there is a thread here because it’s not unrelated to Jeffrey Epstein in this story. A lot of what we’ve talked about today. But also that feeling of like the powerful play by a different set of rules. And also before we get to her at the same podium that he was at, I want to talk about him going to that podium and saying absolutely nothing really quick because I don’t want to pollute our discussion of Artemis with discussions of him, but it’s almost like he couldn’t stand that the attention was on the astronaut.

Beth [00:44:02] A hundred percent.

Sarah [00:44:03] So he stood up and said nothing, just so we were talking about him again. He didn’t even go to the launch. Even though this is part of his legacy, he was definitely pushing a revitalization of NASA, pushing back going to the moon. Couldn’t even take credit for it. I know nobody wants to hear me say this, never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity. I stand by that analysis. I think it’s always true, still true. I don’t know if the same is true for Melania. I don’t know if it’s like missed an opportunity. I just am so often baffled by her. And there’s like moments where I’m like I totally get what makes her tick. This was not one of them.

Beth [00:44:44] I do think Melania fits into the thematic elements we’ve been discussing in that she behaves like a queen. She owes the public nothing, except exactly what she wants to give the public. Melania cares about Melania. I really wanted in Trump’s first term for there to be a redemption arc for Melania, for there be more going on than met the eye, for her to be telling us something, telegraphing things. There was so much analysis around her in the first term. After observing her through that first term, reading her book, watching how she’s behaved in this second term, I don’t think any of that. I just think that she is a queen in a world of kings. And that’s how she conducts and comports herself. I thought that this move was wild and that it tracks. Both things are true for me. I find few people as unrelatable as I find Melania Trump. I don’t understand anything about her worldview. I perceive her as someone who’s pretty shallow on the whole. The nice things I can say is I think she really loves her son. I think she really loves her parents. I think she does care about children generally. I know she’s doing foster care work with some legislators right now. I think there are some things that she tries to do that are good. And I think she wants us to know that she’s a benevolent queen. What specific piece of information prompted her to stand at the podium and defend only herself, not her husband, to do it in a way that seemed to be thrown together very, very quickly.

Sarah [00:46:19] Yeah, I mean the reporting is the aides had no idea.

Beth [00:46:22] Well, and a lot of people pointed out the blinds coming down behind her midway through the press conference. And then what struck me more than the blind, the one person I still open Instagram for is Queen City Lisa, who is a local influencer who tells us about Cincinnati, Northern Kentucky things to do. She also happens to be one of our academic team parents and like the nicest person you’ll ever meet. She pointed out that Melania was backlit and Melania would never choose to be backlit. That’s the kind of thing she pays attention to and has expertise in? So everything felt very thrown together to me about it. Again, on the socials, there is conversation about that New York Times piece where Trump had a woman deported on behalf of a friend. And that that specific story has tentacles to Melania that Melania does not like. I don’t know if that’s it or something else. I don’t know if we’re waiting on a big reported piece that she wanted to get in front of. Whatever it is, I’ve heard lots of theories. It is clear to me that it came together very quickly and that it is further evidence that she is the queen and it’s just about her and nothing else.

Sarah [00:47:32] Well, and it gave the Epstein story more oxygen, which is never what you’d want, even if there is some story coming out about her. To me, you saying she’s shallow is 100% correct. Like she’s the queen and she’s dumb about stuff like this. No one’s told her instincts are bad, but her instincts are bad. Clearly she only has yes men around her. Clearly she only has people who tell her how smart and wonderful and beautiful she is. I don’t really think he gets onto her, criticizes her about anything. So no one says to her like, hey, in the middle of all this AI backlash, maybe you don’t walk through the halls of the White House with a robot. How about that?

Beth [00:48:16] And present it as a teacher? All of that was as bad as it possibly could have been.

Sarah [00:48:21] As bad as it could get. Hey, let’s not give oxygen to this Epstein story. She clearly doesn’t ask for advice. Why would she? No one in this administration does. It’s just a smaller queenly manifestation of the mistakes they make, including with the Iran war. We know we’re the smartest. We know what’s going to happen. There’s no need to plan or take seriously the strategic long-term risks of any of our actions because if it doesn’t go our way we’ll just say it’s going our way and that should be good enough.

Beth [00:48:50] And again, you’d like to find some deeper meaning there. You’d like think maybe she really wants to elevate the voices of the victims. Maybe she really thinks that this should stay in the news. Maybe she wants to hurt him, but I just don’t believe any of that.

Sarah [00:48:59] No, I don’t.

Beth [00:49:00] I don’t believe any of it. I think there is something that got her goat. And on a moment’s notice, she said, “Summon the commoners to listen to me, and they will believe what I tell them.”

Sarah [00:49:12] There’s no there-there. You know what I’m saying?

Beth [00:49:15] I do.

Sarah [00:49:16] Okay, well, we’ve gone from the massively impactful to the merely befuddling. Now let’s wrap this up with something positive since so much of it was not, which is JD Vance. This is me being petty, and then we will move into the real human consequences of this. But JD Vans keeps losing. Before he went to the negotiations that he failed at. He went too Hungary to campaign for Viktor Orban, who has ruled Hungary for 16 years, slowly degrading their democracy in the process. I guess it didn’t work because after 16 years, Orban is out. He lost. Opposition leader Peter Magyar won. His party won 53.6% of the vote, 138 of the 199 parliamentary seats. Incredible. Incredible. In fact, they think his party might have two thirds majority enough to amend Hungary’s constitution and dismantle much of Orban’s grip on the judiciary, staying on enterprises, the media. One of my friends lives in Hungary and he was saying there was like a hot mic moment where one of the media outlets was like, we’ll be back with more. And then the hot mic, the person was like more what? Like, what are we going to say? We’re supposed to just say good stuff about Viktor Orban and he just lost? And they were kind of like ad-libbing about how crazy it was for their media situation. So. It’s a new day for Hungary for sure.

Beth [00:50:51] That has global ramifications that I do not want to brush past. But as an American, I also do not want to brush past the fact that our vice president went to Hungary to campaign in their presidential election full stop. You could end there and say, what? What? When we’re at war, when we have the issues that we have, when healthcare is so expensive, when any number of other things. What? The vice president went to hungry to do a campaign stop for their presidential elections. But also to campaign for someone who has governed as an authoritarian, who has made the media fearful of criticizing him for any number of other things. I got to be honest though, if JD Vance were out stumping for someone I really like, I wouldn’t be enthusiastic about that either. I understand that we have a lot of disputes in our country about America’s role in the world. I feel pretty confident that historic majorities of Americans would agree that our vice president’s role is not to get involved in other countries choosing their leaders.

Sarah [00:51:57] Yeah, there’s only one that’s like pro-Russia. And it makes sense through the lens of this administration that they love somebody who was anti-EU. But I mean the Hungarian people who turned out in massive numbers, the turnout was like 77% or something bananas. If you have not heard them all singing, we are the champion in this big rally, I highly recommend it. It’s uplifting. Magyar ran on a anti-corruption, pro-EU platform. He’s still center right. This is not some like super leftist, but like a real social movement. I mean, the crowds at his rallies are insane. And it’s just so interesting to me that you’re seeing how in other places in Europe too, like with Germany’s AFD, with Milani in Italy, with some of the far right candidates, these populist candidates in France, they’re just running out of room. They’re running out of room on this message. And they’re certainly running out of room and aligning themselves with Trump. Orban and Trump have been like peas in a pod. And it was concerning because of this sort of march of populist authoritarianism around the globe. And people don’t like it.

[00:53:11] And I totally agree about him coming to campaign for him. I just cannot. It is so difficult. I don’t know if I ever took Steve Bannon and his flood the zone strategy as seriously as I should have because there’s just so many times when I think we’ve just forgotten that this is abnormal. I guess because it’s gone on now for 10 years, this Trump era, I don’t know if you still call it abnormal. But I’ve lived for 44 and a president campaigning against a member of his own party, sharing pictures of himself looking like Jesus, posting crude curse word filled missives on Easter Sunday... Remember when they were all mad about Obama’s suit? I know that’s like always the example, but it is hard to just remember one of these things that barely gets an attention like this disaster with the labor secretary. The fallout at the CDC. Like the fact that we have a measles outbreak. Children are dying from measles and it barely gets a damn mention because you can’t swim through all the shit. The norms they shred, the offensive inhuman, from inhuman to ridiculous to stupid. It’s maddening.

Beth [00:54:45] I spent the weekend with a group of listeners at a retreat and we had a presentation party where everybody got to show up and give a presentation about anything they wanted to. And one of our listeners did this amazing presentation, Tina, about a species of bird that was introduced in a very incompetent way to manage a bug population and the bird was an invasive species. Okay? And the bird has been treated as an invasive species by the bird community for a very long time. And Tina, who is as best I can tell, the most fabulous homeschooling mom you’ve ever met, was pushing her kids on the question, how long do you think of something as an invasive species? If that bird has been here for 100 years now, is it still invasive? Or is it part of a constantly adapting, evolving, changing ecosystem? And she told that as a very beautiful and poignant allegory about immigration. But I was thinking about it in this context, too. There has been this global march around populism and there is something in that that persists. A lot of what we’ve talked about in this episode, things we’re mad about or worried about, could be characterized fairly as populist concerns. But the governance by the populists has been manipulative and selfish and demonstrably taking advantage of populist sentiment instead of trying to serve the people that elected them.

[00:56:38] And I don’t want to be ugly to the people that elected them in the course of figuring out, okay, here we are in this world where for a decade we have had an invasive species in our politics. It’s becoming part of our ecosystem. There are things about that that will endure. There are things that will fall away. And I think it’s just such a difficult moment to know that we’re in the midst of that adaptation. We’re seeing people say, “I voted for him three times. I’m so mad at him. I voted for him three times. I’m so embarrassed that he posted himself looking like Jesus.” I’m not going to say to any of those people, “Yeah, you’re the worst. You suck. You should never vote again.” I don’t feel that way. I feel the things shifting. I feel of the ecosystem sorting out what needs to fall away here and what is here to stay and what will remain. And I certainly hope that a lot of what we’ve talked about today is part of what has to go to make way for something new.

Sarah [00:57:41] Hungary’s central message of anti-corruption, that the government was no longer serving the people, was incredibly successful and hyper relevant here. I mean, Ezra Klein wrote a piece about the criticism of Hassan Piker. Tim Miller just wrote a peace saying like we’ve got to invite the America first people and he made it a lowercase first. Do you think Hungary got to this spot where 77% of people voted and they voted overwhelmingly for the new guy because they were shaming people who’d fell for it? Even if you voted for him three times, even if I feel that some corruption was predictable, this level even surprises me. So there’s plenty of room for forgiveness and an invitation to join us in fighting this level of grift and exploitation and power-hungry greed. Like even the person who wanted very different things than I do about abortion or crime, I don’t think they wanted this. Again, I hesitate to say it wasn’t predictable. But again, even I’m surprised. Did anybody think he was going to roll in there in the first year and tear down the East Wing of the White House? He still has the capacity to just blow through norms and expectations. And we have got to acknowledge that and find space for people who are just as surprised by it as we are. And even if you’re not surprised, even if you predicted all of this, there’s supposed to be a path forward. We all weren’t in the same place. Maybe we’re getting closer to the same place now. I mean, you see glimmers of it with Artemis, with these moments. And so it’s not impossible.

Beth [00:59:47] And you have to be careful. Now this opposition party in Hungary has to deliver. An anti-corruption message can also be a manipulative message that was part of Trump’s message. Remember, he was going to drain the swamp. He was going to clean this up. He told us this is how the world works and I’m going to come change it. And instead he said this how the word works and I going to come get even more of it. I’m going to get an even bigger piece of it. If I stick with the birds, I try to remember that the birds outlasted the dinosaurs because people who want to come and take the bigger chunk don’t make it through the evolutionary process. And I do hope that we figure out here in the United States. I hope the people of Hungary figure this out. Ukraine has been in this process for a number of years before Putin invaded it. What does it look like to truly reorient your government to one that serves the population instead of takes from the population?

Sarah [01:00:41] Well, hopefully Hungary is not the last to try to figure that out. Artemis II made it b ack safely.

Beth [01:00:57] I’m so relieved and happy.

Sarah [01:00:58] I knew they were going to. I just want to say that. I was not worried.

Beth [01:01:04] I was worried.

Sarah [01:01:05] I was not. I’ve felt nothing but peace and calm and competence. Like that was my inner gut vibe the whole time.

Beth [01:01:16] Not me. I have been infected by a lot of what we’ve been talking about. And I had read that there were some systems that people were worried about and they were afraid this launch was rushed and should have been delayed. And in my mind, there was no way it was going to be delayed because of X and the SpaceX IPO. And so I was concerned and I felt very, very, very relieved when they splashed down so successfully.

Sarah [01:01:41] Well, and I just thought the science and the technological achievement that they went so far was something. But I don’t know if these astronauts got media training. I’m assuming they did.

Beth [01:01:57] Who did they hire? I would like their business cars.

Sarah [01:02:00] Seriously. Because they just were up for it. They were here telling us philosophy, talking like poets, getting everybody on board, uniting people, sharing some of that incredible perspective that astronauts uniquely have. And it’s just really beautiful.

Beth [01:02:24] I would love to play the audio from one of those poet philosopher moments that really touched me.

Astronaut Victor Glover [01:02:31] You have this amazing place, this spaceship. You guys are talking to us because we’re in a spaceship really far from Earth, but you’re on a spaceship called Earth that was created to give us a place to live in the universe, in the cosmos. Maybe the distance we are from you makes you think what we’re doing is special but we’re the same distance from you and I’m trying to tell you, just trust me, you are special. In all of this emptiness, this is a whole bunch of nothing, this thing we call the universe. You have this oasis, this beautiful place that we get to exist together. I think as we go into Easter Sunday thinking about all the cultures all around the world, whether you celebrate it or not, whether you believe in God or not, this is an opportunity for us to remember where we are, who we are and that we are the same thing and that we got to get through this together.

Beth [01:03:18] Thinking of Earth as a spaceship given to us in the midst of a universe that is so filled with nothingness, just going to be holding onto that for long. That’s a new Bible verse for me.

Sarah [01:03:31] We were in Big Bend for part of our spring break, which is like a dark sky certified place. You can see so many stars. And just the way it works on your head, just here sitting on top of a truck, looking up in Texas. I cannot fathom what it’s like being up there and understanding the expansiveness of space. And there’s this thing that happens to you. And I think some of this is like scientifically established. And it’s not even just looking up at space. It’s like when you look up at an expanse and you look far in the distance, it changes your brain. And I think that they give us a moment to do that. Everybody’s all on their little screens and Artemis II gave us an opportunity to look up and be awed and be inspired and remember that there is so much more to our shared identity as citizens than politics. And you just heard I think over and over again how hungry people were for that.

Beth [01:04:50] I think that’s right. This spaceship metaphor works for me in the sense that it is also precarious, that it’s precious, that it requires work and caretaking. I had so many moments, especially the Easter Sunday post from the president, I had some many moments when I thought, why do we do this to each other? Why are we not all working together to keep our spaceship in good condition, to keep it working? To see how amazing it is. We also went out west for spring break and drove and drove, and drove and drove and saw so many amazing things and work constantly in awe at the scale and the colors and the layers that are created over millions of years on this planet that we all share. And it just was such a reminder that it’s a gift to live here. It’s a responsibility to live here. And I don’t want to spend the precious time that I have to receive and to steward in a wasteful, selfish, short-term posture.

Sarah [01:06:09] That’s why I was so grateful to Artemis too, as I know we all were, for giving us another posture to adopt at least over the last week or so. We hope that you find another similar posture to adopt when you listen to us here at Pantsuit Politics. We thank you so much for listening today. We will be back in your ears on Friday with another episode. We’ll see you in the comments on Substack. Until then, keep it nuanced y’all.

Show Credits

Pantsuit Politics is hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers. The show is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our Managing Director and Maggie Penton is our Director of Community Engagement.

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